Numb Pad

Trying to hit men in HITMAN: CODENAME 47

- Chris Thursten

It’s been years now – decades, even – since developers learned how to make a videogame person move about in a way that approximately maps to the intent of the person controlling them. Revisiting the era before modern conventions set in is worthwhile if only to appreciate how far things have come – to understand that games became better when somebody took a look at a keyboard and decided that their game didn’t need to use every single key all of the time.

The original Hitman is kind of amazing in that regard. It’s hugely ambitious – it wants to be a game of sprawling, simulated fortified places that you break apart in order to get at the juicy target at the centre – but it trips over itself spectacularly when it comes to putting you in control.